I am a MA/MBA candidate at the Lauder Institute and the Wharton School of Business. I focus on Russian politics, economics, and demography but also write more generally about Eastern Europe. Please note that all opinions expressed here are mine and mine alone and that I do not speak in an official capacity for Lauder, Wharton, Forbes or any other organization.
I do my best to inject hard numbers (and flashy Excel charts) into conversations and debates that are too frequently driven by anecdotes. In addition to Forbes I've written for True/Slant, INOSMI, Salon, the National Interest, The Moscow Times, Russia Magazine, the Washington Post, and Quartz.
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4 Things You Should Know About Russian Demography That Vanity Fair Won't Tell You

Vanity Fair recently published a very odd article by Maureen Orth which argues that Russia’s unremittingly horrible demographics are “the kind of desperation that Vladimir Putin is distracting the Russian people from.” The article skips around a bit, and prominently features the opinions of a number of famously pessimistic Americans, but it basically says that the situation is getting worse on the demographic front and that Putin has had to resort to increasingly desperate gambles to prevent people from noticing this. It’s yet another entry in the “everything Russia is rotten and decaying” cannon.

Now purely as a factual matter, Vladimir Putin talks about demography all of the time. Usually Putin’s demographic “analysis” is the sort of self-serving talk you’d expect to hear from any politician (e.g. congratulating himself for recent improvements in the birth rate) but the idea that he is deliberately orchestrating some campaign of silence about Russia’s harrowing population trends is simply not true. Russia’s media landscape is, unfortunately, becoming even more tightly controlled, but demography is not an off-limits topic and you don’t need to search very far to see people discussing it. Heck, the demography-focused pieces I write here at Forbes are frequently translated into Russian by one of the state news agencies! If demography isn’t on the tip of everyone’s tongue in Russia it’s because people there (like people almost everywhere) find it boring and esoteric, not because Putin has ordered them to think about something else.

As is so frequently the case when mainstream magazines try to deal with demography, Vanity Fair presents figures selectively and without much context. We’re told that Russian life expectancy is currently 64 for men and 76 for women, and that this is quite poor by international standards, but we’re told very little about how this relates to Russia’s own recent history (hint: it’ a lot better!). I kept waiting for the article to tell its readers that Russia’s population has stopped shrinking, that the total fertility rate is at a more than two decade high, that alcohol poisonings have decreased sharply, and that Russia’s actual demographic performance over the past 10 years has consistently exceeded even the most optimistic official forecasts. It never did.

Rather than ramble on, I will simply provide 4 charts demonstrating what has actually been happening to Russia’s population over the past two decades along with brief excerpts from the article. You are welcome to make up your own minds about whether the reality of Russia’s demographic situation corresponds with what was presented in Vanity Fair.

1. Russia’s population is currently growing

The article only tells its readers that Russia’s population is “3 million less than when Putin took office.” There is no mention about the huge change in trajectory that has taken place over the past decade.

2. Russia’s life expectancy has also been growing and is now at an all time high

The article only tells its readers that Russia’s life expectancy is low by international standards. This is true. It has been true since the first public health statistics were collected in the late 19th century. But Russia’s life expectancy has actually been growing quickly for much of the past decade. Things are getting better, not worse.

3. Russia’s fertility rate has increased and is now higher than the EU average

The article only says that there was “a drop in fertility by 50 percent between 1987 and 1999″ and that there has been a “slight uptick” in births recently. The uptick in births hasn’t been slight (the crude birth rate increased by 60%) and it has been accompanied by a sustained increase in the total fertility rate. The increase in Russia births is not simply an echo effect, but shows a real and substantial change in behavior.

4. Deaths from alcohol poisoning have decreased sharply

The article says that after a government crack-down on booze “some hard-core alcoholics simply switched to perfume or antifreeze.” Some people, unfortunately, probably did turn to antifreeze when the price of vodka went up. But when you look not only at the specific alcohol-linked data above but at the declining overall mortality rate and the fact that overall life expectancy is growing, you have to conclude that the number of antifreeze drinkers has (thankfully!) remained pretty small. In other words it’s fair to say that Russians still drink too much, but you need to note that they are drinking less, not more, than they used to.

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